


empty nest syndrome

by ivermectin



Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Loss, Dan Humphrey is Not Gossip Girl, Dan Humphrey is a Good Dad, Loss, M/M, Nate Archibald has Daddy Issues, Nate Archibald is just being a Bro, POV Nate Archibald, canon diverges towards the beginning of season 4, it's not relevant to this fic. i just don't want him to be, no characters are bashed in the making of this fanfic, not even georgina sparks, past Dan/Serena, past Nate/Serena, there is no juliet, until he isn't. then it's gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:27:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26949724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivermectin/pseuds/ivermectin
Summary: Dan Humphrey's a wonderful dad. Right until he isn't.Nate Archibald is in love with Serena van der Woodsen. Right untilheisn't.
Relationships: Nate Archibald/Dan Humphrey
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30





	empty nest syndrome

**Author's Note:**

> the Milo plotline from s4, except instead of Vanessa getting involved with Dan, we have Nate, AKA, the first person Dan told when he thought he was a dad. not very hetero of you, Daniel. Nate doesn't use Chuck's little black book; he hangs out with Dan, instead. Georgina probably leaves earlier, or returns later, whatever floats your boat. Anyway, this was going to be a Nate and Dan raise a baby together AU. then I watched the episode in which Dan had to give Milo up and it broke my heart, so here's this.

“This is Milo,” Dan says softly, cradling the baby in his arms. “Do you want to hold him?”

It’s strange, Nate thinks, leaning against Dan, that even though Serena broke his heart the way she did, that he bears Dan no remorse. He isn’t capable of feeling anything for Dan that isn’t fondness and warmth. But then again, Dan’s given him patience and chances too – the thing with Jenny, Before, back when the Humphreys had taken them in – Nate wouldn’t have been surprised if Dan would’ve stabbed him through the gut for that one, for kissing his fifteen-year-old little sister. But they moved past it, the way they move past everything.

“Dude,” Nate says affectionately, taking the baby from him carefully, holding Dan’s son against his chest. “You’re a _dad_. Holy shit.”

“No cussing around the baby, Archibald,” Dan says, with a serious look that’s ruined by the small upward quirk to his lip. “And please don’t tell anyone. Serena, my dad, Lily… nobody knows yet. I gotta tell them myself.”

“I’m the first person you came to?” Nate asks, surprised.

Dan looks at him. “Yeah. I trust you.”

And that takes him back to Serena, wonderful, glowing, mythical Serena, and the way she’d said to him, _I can’t even talk to you_ when he’d called the cops on her dad, because it hadn’t been about Serena, or even about the fact that the man was her father, he’d been giving out fake medication, a man like that had no right being a doctor, but no, this was an episode on the Serena show as always, and she’d broken his heart despite the fact that he’d never been anything but honest with her…

“Hey,” Dan says, snaking an arm around Nate. “You okay? You went somewhere.”

Nate cradles the baby in his arms, leans against Dan, his head on Dan’s shoulder. They’d always had a comfortable amount of physical intimacy, bro-hugs and shoulder bumps, but a baby intensifies it. Nate doesn’t see Georgina being the kind of person to give Dan many hugs, or even someone from whom Dan would welcome hugs, and he gives in to the urge to touch Dan, all the time, which would be creepy, except that Dan does the same thing. Nate thinks they might both be a little touch starved.

“Sorry,” he says. He looks at Dan, and Dan looks back at him, concerned, and the moment is charged, electric, alive with a feeling that Nate isn’t sure how to decipher. It makes him want to be honest.

“Serena broke my heart, I guess,” Nate offers. “It hurts a lot more than I thought it would, that I can even put words to.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you’re in love,” Dan offers, and ruffles Nate’s hair fondly. “I’m sorry, man.”

Nate feels like he’s missing something, but isn’t sure how to ask. He gently gives Milo back to Dan.

“Well, you know how it is,” Dan says, gently holding Milo to his chest, not really looking at Nate. “Serena is… Serena.” He looks at Nate, his expression serious. “She’s an enigma.”

“Nobody else feels that way,” Nate says, sighing. “Nobody else gets that, she’s such a force to be reckoned with. I mean, in a good way.”

“I know what you mean,” Dan says, and he has a thoughtful smile on his face. “I’ll always love Serena, she’s genuinely lovely, but she isn’t an easy person to understand.”

Nate feels weirdly defensive, even though he’d been saying the same thing. It’s clear that Dan respects Serena, and cares for her, which is the same place Nate’s coming from.

Still, there’s something about sitting here with Serena’s ex-boyfriend who also happens to be his friend, hell, his best friend, even, that makes it painfully clear that he and Serena just hadn’t been compatible. That however much he’d loved her, he couldn’t ever have been the person she’d needed. That he barely understood how to be the person she needed, or even what she wanted.

“I guess I wasn’t the right man for her,” Nate says, feeling like he’s digging a knife into his skin even as he says it.

“It’s not your fault,” Dan says, and if it were anyone other than Dan in Dan’s position, Nate would’ve wanted to yell, to say “ _you’re the one who kissed my girlfriend while she was still dating me, you’re the reason we fell apart”_ but the way Dan is looking at him is genuine and kind, and it means a lot that Dan cares about him this much.

“Anyone would be lucky to have you as a boyfriend,” Dan says, and he’s cradling his son again, not really looking at Nate, and Nate thinks he is so lucky to have a friend like him, that there’s something about Dan that makes it so easy to be with him.

“Thanks, man,” Nate says gratefully.

-

The next time Nate shows up, it’s to find Rufus and Lily setting up the nursery. Lily is holding Milo in her arms. Dan is asleep on the couch, a blanket thrown over him casually.

“Anything I can do?” Nate asks Rufus, before quickly glancing at Dan just to ensure he doesn’t wake him up.

“We’re mostly done setting up the nursery,” Rufus says.

Lily walks over to Nate, hands him Milo, and Nate holds his best friend’s son carefully.

“You’re welcome to stay for dinner, if you like,” she tells him.

So Nate does. They don’t wake Dan for dinner, they put leftovers in the fridge (Rufus tells Nate that Dan had mentioned not having gotten interrupted sleep for weeks, so they let him sleep.)

Lily and Rufus tell him, eventually, that they’re leaving, but neither of them seem inclined to kick Nate out of the loft. Rufus asks him something about intentions and Dan, and Nate looks at him, the calm in his body due to his being asleep, and says, “I just want to be here for him.”

Later, when Dan wakes up, Nate heats leftovers for him. Dan thanks him groggily, eats and then ambles over to the bed, murmuring something about how good it was to have someone who’d cooked food for him, and Nate is ready to leave – Milo’s asleep in the cradle, and Dan’s right there – but Dan sits up and says, “You’re welcome to spend the night here, if you like.”

Maybe it’s a moment of weakness, Nate isn’t sure. But he carefully takes off his shoes, and sits down on the bed, next to Dan. “Okay,” he says. “Could we share the bed?”

“Yeah, no biggie,” Dan says, which – Nate had temporarily forgotten how weird Dan Humphrey is, but it makes him smile. “You okay, bro?”

Nate lies down, and waits for Dan to lie down next to him. “I don’t know,” he says.

It all boils down to Serena; Serena, who kept leaving him again and again. Serena, who was an amazing friend and not such an amazing girlfriend. Serena, who loved her freedom and adventure and soul searching more than anything Nate could give her.

He shifts, and the thing about Dan’s bed is it isn’t really big enough for two men to platonically share it, so he somehow ends up with his head pressed against Dan’s shoulder, their bodies angled weirdly so that they’re sort of spooning each other, sort of leaning against each other.

“Did not know you like to cuddle,” Dan says thoughtfully, teasingly, and it’s nice that Dan’s still _Dan_ , even if being a single dad is taking it out of him.

Nate takes it as an invitation. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Humphrey,” he says, and he curls his body around Dan like an apostrophe, hands over his heart. They fall asleep like that.

-

It becomes a Thing. Nate ends up moving in with Dan, for the time being at least. They don’t talk about Chuck, and they don’t talk about Jenny. Sometimes, they put Lily and Rufus in charge of minding Milo for a night, and they get drunk and talk about Serena, but the more they do it, the less it hurts.

Dan gets it, Nate knows. The fact that Serena was so out of their league, was in a league of her own, elusive yet wonderful, and he goes on and on, talking about how much he loves her, his head on Dan’s lap while Dan runs his fingers through Nate’s hair and goes, “Hmm, yeah.”

Dan’s feelings about Serena are more conflicted. He says he’ll probably never get over her, but also that she isn’t the person he fell in love with, and that he isn’t the person she fell in love with, either.

“You know,” he’ll say incoherently, words slurring together from too much alcohol. “High school romances are cute, but you don’t stay the person you are in high school forever.”

Dan being a dad is very attractive. He sings to Milo as he cradles him to sleep, knows how to handle his colic, in the middle of the night, with baby spit on his clothes, he soothes his agitated child, and he’s just so beautiful. Taking care of someone comes to him naturally.

They share the bed every night. Fatherhood is a lot, Nate figures, and he knows Dan has Rufus and Lily and Vanessa, but he doesn’t want Dan to feel like he’s alone. Nate wakes up to an empty bed – Dan’s always up early to feed Milo, and he’s a natural dad. It makes something in Nate’s chest hurt.

“That child is going to grow up so loved,” Nate tells Dan one night, in the dark, while they’re lying in bed.

“What, because of Dad and Lily?” Dan asks.

“No, you goof,” Nate says affectionately, playful in the way he only is with Dan. “Because of you. You’re gonna be a great dad.”

“Aw, shucks. You sure know how to flatter, Archibald,” Dan says.

“Yeah, well, I meant it,” Nate tells him. And he really did mean it. Dan’s a natural father. Nothing like The Captain. Dan’s son is never going to grow up to feel the way that Nate did, like the whole world was balanced on his shoulders.

He suddenly wants nothing more than for their positions to be reversed, for Dan to hold him in his arms. Instead, he presses his face against Dan’s shoulder, inhales deeply, tries not to let his body shake.

“Hey,” Dan says, reaching for Nate’s hands. “Thank you for being here with me. I couldn’t do this without you.”

As sweet a sentiment as that is, Nate highly doubts it. Dan’s plenty capable on his own. Still, he says, softly, “There’s no place I’d rather be.”

-

When Dan ends up needing to give Milo back to Georgina, and spends three days straight in bed, Nate doesn’t ask him to talk about it. He just lies down next to Dan, holds Dan’s hands, waits.

After day four of not doing anything, Dan shifts, puts a hand on Nate’s cheek.

“Please,” Dan murmurs softly. “Just distract me?”

The look on Dan’s face is intense, sad, pleading in a way Nate’s never seen Dan look, and Nate gets it suddenly, why Serena was so infatuated with Dan. He’s compelling, steady, solid. Nate reaches for him, puts both his hands on Dan’s lower back, the way he would with a girl, pulls him closer, and kisses him gently.

It’s nothing like kissing a girl. It’s nothing like kissing anyone he’s ever kissed before. Dan’s body against his is warm, familiar from all the nights spent lying next to each other, and Dan’s giving it his all, like he doesn’t want to think, doesn’t want to stop, doesn’t want to _be_.

Nate can work with that. His sexual experiences are weird enough that he can do variety, and he pulls Dan against him, pushes his hips against Dan’s, and they’re both grinding against each other, Dan making soft guttural noises, and looking at Nate like he’s never seen him before, while Nate sucks at his neck, putting one hand in Dan’s soft, curly hair, running his fingers across Dan’s scalp.

Dan’s breathing’s speeding up. “Hey, dude,” he says unsteadily. “What’s with the attention to my neck? You got a thing for vampires?”

“I’ve got a thing for Humphrey men,” Nate says, voice low and sensual. “I’m going to do your dad next, Daniel.”

Dan laughs, and comes while he’s still laughing, shaking against Nate and letting his hands rest on Nate’s shoulders. “Oh, Archibald, you’re good.”

Nate smiles. “Still hard, Humphrey.”

Dan looks at Nate, and Nate looks right back.

“Alright, alright,” Dan says, and unfastens Nate’s belt and his trousers, slipping a hand into his underwear, taking the length of Nate’s dick in his hand. He strokes at it awkwardly, using the precum leaking from the tip to slick it up. He slips his other hand up Nate’s shirt, traces patterns down his chest. “Come for me,” he snarls, and gently nibbles at Nate’s ear, and Nate does, with a shocked gasp.

Dan gets out some tissues from a drawer by the bed, and they both clean off. Nate wraps his arms around Dan, holds him close to his chest.

“You would’ve been a great dad,” he says again, and it’s like a dam breaks inside Dan, because he sounds like he’s trying not to cry.

“Losing Milo broke my heart,” Dan murmurs softly.

“I know,” Nate says, just as softly. He kisses the top of Dan’s head. “It’s not fair.”

-

“I don’t know why I’m so torn up about this,” Dan tells Nate, after another day of not leaving the bed except for when he needed to use the bathroom. “It’s not even like Milo was my baby.”

“He was, though,” Nate says, gently running a hand through Dan’s hair.

Their phones ping with messages at the same time; neither boy checks. Which is why when Serena van der Woodsen shows up at Dan’s place in fifteen minutes, both boys just state at her, wide-eyed.

“Hi,” Serena says, and she’s lovely as ever, but Nate no longer feels the flutter, the longing, the allure of everything she is. It’s strange, he thinks, realising you’ve fallen out of love with someone.

“Serena, hey,” Dan says. His body is still inclined towards Nate, so Nate takes the opportunity to wrap an arm around Dan, and Dan leans against Nate. “Sorry, it’s just not a very good time.”

She looks between the two of them, and Nate can practically see her thinking. “Oh, did I interrupt something?”

“No,” Nate says.

“Yes,” Dan says.

Serena gives them both a look, the sort of look that signifies eyebrow raising. “Okay, I’m going to leave you both to it,” she tells them, and she leaves.

And Nate looks at Dan, Dan who’s in his arms and who isn’t looking at him. In fact, he seems to be looking at anything except Nate.

“Hey,” Nate whispers, and kisses Dan’s cheek. “Please tell me this is something you want for real.”

Dan, when he responds, sounds choked up. “Yes. Would you want to date me? Be my boyfriend?”

He sounds unsure, and he’s clearly stumbling through it, which is all part of the Dan Humphrey charm.

Nate wants to say, there’s nothing I’d love more, but he thinks for a moment, about the way he’d felt around Serena, like a kite swirling in the sky, and the way he feels with Dan, like a ship, grounded, secure and safe and finally _at home_. He swallows.

“Yeah, I’d love to,” Nate murmurs. “I love you.”

Dan smiles, the big beaming dorkish smile that makes him look simultaneously silly and endearing. “I love you too.” His smile fades a little. “Please don’t break my heart any further,” he says, softly, a stab of sincerity that feels too open, even from Dan Humphrey. “Losing Milo already shattered it.”

“I understand,” Nate murmurs, and he holds Dan even closer. “It must be hard, having this conversation.”

“Mm,” Dan says, quietly. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Nate murmurs. He kisses Dan softly, taking his time.

“We should send this one to Gossip Girl,” Nate says, quietly. “Would save us the trouble of coming out.”

“I think Dad and Lily already know how far gone I am,” Dan admits. “And I don’t really know how to break the news to Jenny. But other than that, yeah, sure.”

“We can handle everything later,” Nate says. “It’ll work out. It has to.”

He can tell that Dan doesn’t quite believe him, but it’s fine. Dan leans against him, closes his eyes. Nate knows Dan will fall asleep like this, in his arms. He stays silent, and he waits.

**Author's Note:**

> anyway, Dan/Nate is my gossip girl OTP, if such a thing exists. i will probably write more fic with them, because i genuinely love their dynamic THAT much. 
> 
> i really wish dan had gotten to keep milo. 


End file.
